What baffles me is Tesla's paralysis compared to BYD. Wasn't Tesla's goal to do rapid expansion to stay on top of everybody else volume wise? Nowadays Giga Berlin produces way less vehicles than anticipated and the only new factory being planned is Giga Mexico, which also seems to proceed slower than expected. In addition while the next vehicle from Tesla will probably be a smaller and cheaper car, it's still at least a year before they'll be able to ship it. All that while Tesla seems to have lots cash at hand, so why don't they expand more aggressively?
A couple of main issues. In the US. Company EVs are currently not possible because they would be too expensive. The 7.5k IRA discount only applies if car and battery are manufactured in the USA. Tesla/panasonic is the only large scale battery manufacturer in the US and capacity is tapped out for existing models. Tesla would need to 4x this capacity to sell compact in the US with sufficient volume/margin. Tesla’s Mexico plant will achieve volume production at start of 2026. Second issue Elon messed up. Elon assumed that he would be able to either scale 4680 battery production a lot faster OR FSD would have achieved L4 autonomy by now which would unlock 3x utility of existing fleet via owners lending their car to rideshare when not in personal use. If this happened the need for a compact vehicle would be in theory greatly lessened. Neither happened and Elon has no backup plan. Hence why he is 2-3 years behind BYD in developing a compact EV.
You also forgot stomping on all of his engineers and designers and demanding an untenable design for the cyber truck. All of that wasted time and effort could’ve been spent on a smaller EV vs a truck that’s going to struggle to gain any market share outside of Tesla loyalists.
I won't even get into just how ugly I (and anecdotally, many of my friends) find the Cybertruck; have you SEEN videos of people trying to actually use it as a truck and it completely failing to function offroad?
All of this stuff is directly attributable to Elon Musk. He's demanding a 25% stake in the company from his board - the same board that was found to be so absurdly stacked in his favor that his last pay package was thrown out.
Shareholders, at this point, should kick this guy out of Tesla and leave him to his true passions: shitposting on Twitter and SpaceX.
>* apparently the automatic rain sensor doesn't work/exist (I think that's always been true; I just learned about it)
My Dec 2016 Model S has a "working" automatic rain sensor, it's just not as good as others I've seen. My '04 Audi A8 had a sensor so good that the first time it turned on I didn't know why, but then as I drove under some street lights I realized it had detected some really fine mist.
On the other hand, part of the reason I switched from the Audi to the Tesla was that I had $10k in broken "toys" on the Audi (1 of 2 bluetooth radios, 2 doorhandle auto unlockers, leak in the air suspension, steering wheel adjustment motor, etc), and part of what I wanted in the Tesla was something less expensive maintenance wise. So making more do less (using the cameras for auto wipers) makes sense.
Sure, the rain sensor might have near zero failures. I would think the rain sensor probably has failure rates on the order of bluetooth radio failure rates, but I had one of those fail. But what has truly 0 failures is to eliminate the rain sensor entirely. More importantly though, the rain sensor is just one of many, many toys the Audi had. Failure rates are multiplicative, so if you can remove 50% of your parts, you eliminate a lot of points of failure, plus a ton of extra wiring and electrical problems, plus the whole problem of integration.
My '13 Audi has significant problems with the rain sensor. It turns on when it shouldn't, doesn't turn off when it should, and when I first start the car and it's already raining I have to turn the wipers off and on.
The best rain sensor I had was in my old Ford Mondeo '04.
> was thrown out purely on the grounds that the judge didn't like it
It was thrown out for technical but super legal reasons stemming from the Board’s lack of independence. Delaware judges don’t get to review pay packages approved by competently-run Boards.
The pay package wasn't determined by the Board. It was approved by them, sure. But they didn't set it. Why would it matter whether they had any independence?
If lack of independence is grounds for annulling the pay package, it's also grounds for annulling every other decision the Board ever approved. (It's the same Board!) That wasn't suggested; the grounds for annulling the pay package are different.
It was handled fine. If it had been badly handled, it would have been thrown out on those grounds. Instead, the grounds were "there is no reason for Elon Musk to be paid this much".
No it really wasn’t. Delaware goes out of its way to trust corporate boards to make business decisions, especially around compensation.
In this case Tesla screwed up at least 3 different standards that are generally biased towards the company against shareholders. Only the last of those 3 standards has anything to do with relative compensation.
I’m not one to be bullish on Tesla under Elon Musk but I don’t see how the Cybertruck was a waste considering that it’s squarely placed in the most popular and profitable segment of the automobile market in North America.
It’s almost dimensionally identical to the F-150 and the masculine “look at me” cyberpunk appearance is 100% in line with basically everything about the big three automakers’ trucks’ demographics.
The only thing BYD can do differently is eat up unprofitable markets like the $20,000 econobox EV.
BYD will have dominated the world before Tesla does anything at this rate.
Here in Brazil, EVs basically didn't exist. Only very few Prius were seen around, and I mean very few.
Now, BYD showed up and everywhere you go you see one. Had Tesla been there, the same would have happened. But they chose to not even try (or weren't competent enough to do it).
BYD is doing the same in many other countries. Pretty soon I can see BYD being the main provider of EVs in multiple countries. Tesla had years of advantage and totally missed the opportunity to expand into those markets craving EVs.
I agree with most of this, but it's worth noting BYD is only 35% of China's auto market. Tesla is #2 at 8%. All the rest are other Chinese companies.
People in this thread are focusing a lot of ire at Tesla, but why do none of the other US, European, Japanese or South Korean auto makers make a showing? Why are they all behind not just BYD and Tesla but a bunch of other Chinese companies most people have never heard of? It's easy to blame Elon and his dumb tweets, but China is eating everyone's lunch in EVs, Tesla is notable solely for being in the game and losing while effectively no other auto makers are even in the game.
Literally most of the top 10 EV companies in China are doing more EV sales solely in China than the global EV sales of basically any other company on earth except Tesla (VW gets a big asterisk). A truly incredible failure across "the west".
Definitely agree that it's not just Tesla that failed, but I think the focus on them is because they kind of kick-started most of it. When you're 10 laps ahead and you still manage to lose the lead, you're gonna be the main story.
The other auto makers don't want to switch to EVs (despite the typical PR showing around it). They were not ready for it and are many years behind. They are doing this mostly out of panic because after Tesla, it's clear that there is a market and people actually want them. Now governments are also starting to force transitions (although force is doing a lot of work here given the time frames).
What surprised me the most is BYD being sold here in Brazil, and other developing countries, when there is basically no charging network. Goes to show how the profile of consumers is different. People in the US still complain about range like they will actually travel from NY to LA, meanwhile people here are buying BYD for the luxury/status/aesthetic of it without even giving a second though about range.
My previous prediction was that it would be similar to the US where we'd only have adoption after there was progress in the charging front, but I was thoroughly wrong. People in these countries are more than happy to "sacrifice" in that front for a very expensive good looking car. It's more about the status than anything else since we don't have EV subsidies or anything similar to make it advantageous financially (at least to my knowledge).
I was going to reply by saying something similar: BYD sells 90% of their cars in China.
I don’t think their success in China is a guarantee anywhere else, even if they are doing well in Brazil (which is not a very important automotive market, representing 1/10th the sales volume of the USA while having less than half of its population).
It’s also important to remember that BYD sells hybrid vehicles. Granted, they ship more pure EVs than Tesla.
I think it’s easy to see why EVs suit China well. There’s no range anxiety when you have more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined. There’s also no long-existing petrol car culture or infrastructure, China is starting from scratch. Many of their EV buyers could be first-time car buyers. Probably close to 100% of car buyers in the West have owned other cars.
From a policy level, oil is an import product for China, and components for EVs are domestic products, so they have an obvious incentive to electrify.
This goes back to my feelings on why the CyberTruck wasn’t a waste of effort: again, it’s competing with the most popular vehicle in the USA in the most profitable vehicle segment on the planet that is entirely protected by the US government from imports (the chicken tax). Financially think the CyberTruck is almost guaranteed success.
After having seen them on the road, I don't think the look is amazing or terrible. It's just something new that is somewhere between truck-ish and car-ish.
There are innovative things to admire about it - interesting steering, non-trucklike-ride, squat to load, covered bed, AC power taps, self-driv^H^H^H^Hsteering/cruise.
There are awful things to endure - lack of dedicated controls for critical stuff, everything on touchscreen in center of car.
I think it's just going to exist and at some point lose its novelty.
I'm about 50% convinced the cyber truck was a billionaire joke to see who would buy it. musk got bored with making cars and decided to amuse himself with a prank.
The other 50 is that the CEO has surrounded themselves with yes-men to the point of liability. Nobody dared point out the emperor's lack of clothes.
> It’s almost dimensionally identical to the F-150 and the masculine “look at me” cyberpunk appearance is 100% in line with basically everything about the big three automakers’ trucks’ demographics.
You clearly are not around any of the big three automakers trucks demos if you really believe this shit was ever going to succeed in it.
BYD now has a traditional pickup truck they've been working on for a year or so ready to launch (they were recently test driving it in Australia) so I guess we'll see whether the standard pickup truck shape with low price due to better batteries will win over crazy cyberpunk looks.
>I’m not one to be bullish on Tesla under Elon Musk but I don’t see how the Cybertruck was a waste considering that it’s squarely placed in the most popular and profitable segment of the automobile market in North America.
If you think any current truck owner is at all interested in a cybertruck's design, you are definitely one being bullish on Tesla.
I've owned trucks nearly my entire life and wouldn't touch the thing with a 30-foot pole. Across the various auto enthusiast forums I participate in, it's universally mocked. Among the folks I know that own pickups, everyone else feels the same about its design as I do.
The only people I have heard say that it's not outright ugly are people that are Tesla fanboys and even among those it's generally "it's not that bad".
It is not a "masculine look" - it looks like something someone who can't form sheet metal put together in their garage.
The Cybertruck is a waste because it's an awful truck. The extreme aesthetics are a hard "you must have it" -or- "you wouldn't buy it a million years," with very little middle ground. The carrying capacity is shit. It's off-road and even trail capabilities are also pretty limited. Like I get that it's a trope at this point that most Americans do not buy a truck to use for truck things, but that's quite a different ball game to selling a truck to them that is functionally useless as a truck even in the rare instances you might want one. It's frankly so limited in terms of what Tesla generously calls it's "bed" that it'd be better characterized as an SUV with an open-air cargo area.
As bad a truck as a 2024 F-150 is in terms of truck-ness, it is still a truck and will perform a baseline number of truck things more or less competently, even if it would get roundhouse kicked by an 2004 F-150 in terms of doing actual work. Or hell, get yourself a Rivian truck if you want. It has a striking design which doesn't utterly ruin it as a truck and is similarly priced to boot.
And, it's worth noting, in the extremely long ramp up for the Cybertruck we're already seeing things like the F-150 Lightning, which incorporates all the benefits of an electric truck, and is sold by an OEM that actually does QA and sells via standard dealerships, and just looks like a normal ass truck while inheriting all the pluses of that fact (the ability to hold a bicycle, for example). Like, unless you are just 100% irrevocably sold on the looks of the Cybertruck, I cannot fathom why you would spend ballpark 30% more on a less-capable vehicle.
And if you just want a status symbol, the electric Hummer IMO absolutely demolishes the Cybertruck in terms of aesthetics while also being a vastly superior vehicle and is ALSO coming from a reputable, well established brand.
TL;DR: The Cybertruck took so goddamn long to actually become available that it's disappointing launch version is already getting lapped by competitors who are selling comparative machines for lower prices that are more capable and look better, and don't come with the baggage, political and otherwise, that the Tesla brand increasingly brings.
Your opinions are totally valid here and I even agree with many of them but some facts that need highlighting:
The Cybertruck bed is a full 6 foot bed. It’s got a liner, it’s got tie-downs, it is a real truck bed. It is practically an F-150 clone in packaging and sizing.
The Cybertruck took almost exactly 4 years between concept reveal and shipping which is totally reasonable for the auto industry. Just ignore the Peter Molyneux-like promises of Elon Musk and it’s a totally normal car launch timeline.
Off-road deficiencies are all over the place with EVs because they’re heavy. No other brand is going to defy physics.
Cybertruck competitors in the same price range you can order are the F-150 and the Rivian R1T. The Rivian base model is $10k more and the F-150 base model is stripped down, you get things like manual adjusted seats. But hey, it is cheaper at the same range.
The mid-tier Rivian is basically the same price as the Cybertruck mid range. The one deficiency with is at the high end where Rivian offers more range, but that’s also a getting to be a very expensive truck.
The Hummer is not even in the same class of vehicle. It’s a 5 foot bed truck. If you’re going to point fingers at electric trucks that aren’t usable work trucks, that’s the one. It’s also starting at $100k. Not in the same price class at all.
Putting the feelings about Elon aside I’m just calling it like I see it here: Tesla is competing in a market which is highly lucrative, is very high volume, and they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match. Heck, they’ve even got a reliability advantage over Rivian (Consumer Reports).
> they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match.
Ford and GM gaining access to their charging network this year. I always hear how their software is an advantage, but how? At point I feel like people just say Tesla software is “better” without having actually compared it to anything else because I’ve yet to run into a situation where it seems better to me.
> The Cybertruck bed is a full 6 foot bed. It’s got a liner, it’s got tie-downs, it is a real truck bed. It is practically an F-150 clone in packaging and sizing.
The length and width aren't the only concern: the tapered-off roof bit that goes to either side of the bed means you can't put anything in the bed that's wider than the bed on either side, and if you've used a truck before for, for example, landscaping: a common way to use it is to park it near your work area where you're, I dunno, tearing some brush down or something, and chuck shit into the bed as you work. With my F-150, I raise my bed cover up which keeps my rear-cab glass safe, and I can now load this easily from all three directions to the rear: this can't be done with a Cybertruck, without risking damage to the bodywork that's (stupidly) over the edge of the bed.
It's basically the same issue the 04 Silverado had with those stupid plastic bits they put behind the cab, except on the Cybertruck, it isn't shitty plastic you can break off and be done with it: it's part of the paneling.
> The Cybertruck took almost exactly 4 years between concept reveal and shipping which is totally reasonable for the auto industry. Just ignore the Peter Molyneux-like promises of Elon Musk and it’s a totally normal car launch timeline.
Yes, and quite smartly, GM shut up about the Hummer until it was ready.
> Off-road deficiencies are all over the place with EVs because they’re heavy. No other brand is going to defy physics.
The electric F-150 is a much, much more capable off road vehicle. I think the trick is designing a vehicle to do a thing and then make it look nice, versus designing it to look neat and then trying to figure out how to make it do things.
> The mid-tier Rivian is basically the same price as the Cybertruck mid range. The one deficiency with is at the high end where Rivian offers more range, but that’s also a getting to be a very expensive truck.
Yes, and again, the F-150 and Rivian are suitable for use as a truck where the Cybertruck isn't. That's my point. And again, if you don't actually want a truck, just an expensive SUV, that's where I think the Hummer is actually superior to the Cybertruck. Haven't heard about a Hummer rusting 5 days after delivery yet.
> The Hummer is not even in the same class of vehicle. It’s a 5 foot bed truck. If you’re going to point fingers at electric trucks that aren’t usable work trucks, that’s the one. It’s also starting at $100k. Not in the same price class at all.
Which is why I brought it up as an option, because I genuinely cannot fathom someone who wants a work truck buying one of these stupid cybertrucks. They're even worse than modern trucks are on every axis and are also expensive as shit.
> Tesla is competing in a market which is highly lucrative, is very high volume, and they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match.
Worth noting that a ton of the market for trucks is in fleet vehicles, which Tesla just... cannot do. They can't move the volume enough for, for example, a telecom company that needs a fleet of trucks for servicing their network. And no sane teleco is dropping $65k per truck for service fleet business.
And again, they're shit trucks.
I think Tesla is playing up moving into the truck space but what it really is, if we're being honest, is a luxury SUV. A weekend toy for wealthier families, that's just what it is, not judging. My F-150 is largely a toy itself, I use it for light yard work but it also has 22" rims and SUV tires because I don't do anything harder than grass with it. I'm just honest with myself when I say mine is a toy, and that's fine.
And that's what the Cybertruck is, and it's not going to do volume for that exact reason, and I think it's also going to struggle as a luxury SUV too because, frankly, it's hideous and the Tesla brand doesn't swing like it used to in the minds of consumers.
> which would unlock 3x utility of existing fleet via owners lending their car to rideshare
I still don't understand why anyone ever thought that was going to happen. Even if the autonomy were there, who was really going to use their car for rideshare when they didn't need it themselves? I know some people thought it would bring them a lot of value, because that's what Elon promised. But the reality would have been a classic race-to-the-bottom, and they'd have been lucky to break even after accounting for wear and tear.
It will be awesome when your own car pulls up at 8am to take you to work and there's vomit and trash everywhere, spilled drinks, dirty shoes, stale vape smoke lingering in the air.
Sure there might be rules and fines but people already do all this when there is real human driving the taxi!
Plus, do you really expect everyone to treat your items with the same respect and care you do? Even little things like slamming the doors or scratching up the seats with metal belts or jean studs.
Yeah maybe Tesla will make it right. But at how much effort? How correct will it be fixed?
I acknowledge the above comment re vomit in car is an edge case, and so are the links I attached. But to suggest this doesn't occur in Airbnb, and wouldn't occur with a car share service is naive.
It's not so much most regular people would do rideshare that much. It's more that every new Tesla sold after L4 was achieved would be bought by small biz folks, Uber, etc. specifically to use for rideshare and would pay a premium for both the car and for FSD software.
I’m not actually convinced Elon ever thought they’d achieve L4/L5 autonomy in the timelines he originally proposed. I think it was all a ploy to pump the stock and sell more cars. And it worked.
> I think it was all a ploy to pump the stock and sell more cars.
I wonder why a CEO lying to pump his stock is not yet illegal. Otherwise what's topping Sundar to come out and say
"Google will have AGI in 6 months, buy Alphabet stonks wink-wink".
> And it worked.
I know, because a couple of my friends put all their saving in TSLA stocks during the pandemic. And all it cost Elon was his credibility and being exposed as a clueless liar to the point if he'd say the sky is blue, I'd double check.
The IRA discount only applies to the US market, where AFAIK BYD is not even present, right? So it doesn't really explain why Tesla is trailing behind BYD globally.
Or maybe your point is "Tesla is not helped by its government as much as BYD is"? Which could be a fair point.
BYD's volume comes from selling tons of the lower end. My explanation above is why Tesla (Elon) didn't think he needed a compact car. So BYD is killing with compact cars because Tesla does not have one and won't for at least two years.
Level 4 needs a driver outside of the small existing tests involving geofencing. I don't see how anyone would be loaning out their Tesla's for rideshare anytime soon.
I remember the time when the Nevada Gigafactory was really hyped up. It was supposed to dwarf even the largest Amazon Distribution Center and the plans were expand it to where you could see its octagonal shape from outer space. It was to be in the size of hundreds of football fields. Planes and drones flown by fanboys hovered over the site and posted weekly updates on how magnificent the progress was, like we were watching a modern-day pyramid endeavor. Of course, it was just another Musk distortion field. Today it’s only at 30% of the fantastical plans. The stock went up though.
According to this list, even its current state, the Nevada Gigafactory has the most floorspace of any warehouse in the world (5.3 million ft², followed by Boeing with 4.3 million ft²). Not entirely unimpressive.
There is no drifting apart. If so then there will be full regression to the minimum viable product, the low end Tesla. It was a conscious choice in order to save margin during the chip shortage post-Covid but under the pretext of vision is best. Radar-equipped cars used to be able to see through fog and heavy rain now nerfed.
I meant they would have had two maintain the logic for vision and radar and new features could be developed for one over the other. Calling it the same thing and trying to support the same settings with both was increasing workload so they decided to just implement the lowest common denominator.
BYD's battery division is an absolute gold mine like AWS is for Amazon.
BYD is the primary battery supplier for most consumer electronics (you're iPhone or Macbook is using a BYD battery for example).
Tesla doesn't have an "AWS" equivalent to subsidize it's automotive division, as the Solar+Grid Battery+Battery Management Systems divisions have much lower margins and higher upfront cost.
> BYD is the primary battery supplier for most consumer electronics (you're iPhone or Macbook is using a BYD battery for example)
Hey, do you have a source for this? I am trying to find this information online but I am failing to find, but it sounds super plausible. In their own website there's not much information other than their batteries are used in other things besides cars - link to the site below
Somehow it wasn't in theit Wikipedia either - it mentions briefly something about batteries for common electronics but doesn't details or mentioned Apple. Anyway, thanks for the source!!!
Most Chinese corporate information isn't going to be found on English Wikipedia tbh.
It's an insular industry and most OEMs and VARs are Taiwanese, Chinese, Singaporean, Thai, or Malaysian so Mandarin is the preferred language as they're all owned by the SEA Chinese diaspora
No, there are so many dialects (Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hokchew, Hakka, Hainanese, ...) that are so unevenly distributed that Mandarin is the lingua franca. Eg. Singapore was mostly Hokkien back in the day, but decades of government policy has taught Mandarin to basically all Chinese there and younger folks know dialect poorly if at all.
I've grown up reading business news/trade news in the tech industry since I was a kid, my dad was in the industry, and I am as well, so all these names are common to me.
All I can say is any long read business news you see in NYT or WSJ is 3-5 year behind trends.
If it made it to either, it's already at the 4th-5th part of the Gartner Hype Cycle (which itself deserves a hype cycle)
Wait. The list is only for listing supplier of Apple products. Why do you know "BYD is the primary battery supplier for most consumer electronics (you're iPhone or Macbook is using a BYD battery for example)."?
The Apple's supply chain is very complex, and we don't know the exact number of supply percentage, do we?
I heard on the grapevine that 60% of a US "Tesla gigafactory" is actually a Panasonic battery factory. The battery vertical is definitely a critical part of this story.
That's no secret. Here's the Panasonic press release from 2014. "According to the agreement, Tesla will prepare, provide and manage the land, buildings and utilities. Panasonic will manufacture and supply cylindrical lithium-ion cells and invest in the associated equipment, machinery, and other manufacturing tools based on their mutual approval. ... Tesla will take the cells and other components to assemble battery modules and packs."[1]
Panasonic now has another cell factory in North America, in DeSoto, Kansas. This time, Tesla is not the landlord.
A "cell" is a single unit device, and a "battery" is a group of connected cells. Panasonic makes cylindrical cells in standard dimensions. Others assemble the cells into into battery packs.
Much of the rechargable battery industry works like that. Plants that make cells are mostly chemical plants, and some of the chemicals are corrosive, toxic, and flammable. Once the chemicals have been canned into a neat little metal can, assembly into packs is a routine manufacturing operation.
It's possible to make integrated batteries. Classic 12 volt lead-acid auto batteries have six cells, producing 2 volts each. BYD is heavily into integrated batteries, with their "blade" technology. There are lots of things that can go wrong in integrated battery manufacturing, but if the process can be debugged, the density is higher and the cost is probably lower.
I've heard a similar story as well. I think the US factories is partially owned by Panasonic and the Shanghai one is partially owned by CATL.
I don't think Tesla really hired any battery engineers or R&D either come to think of it.
If they did, they would have had an R&D office in Japan or SK who are leaders in Battery Chemistry but I don't think they have a presence there at all.
Most likely Tesla and Panasonic are co-sharing IP with Tesla taking a lead on Battery Management Software (a very hard problem) and Panasonic on Battery Manufacturing and Efficiency (an equally hard problem)
Apple and BYD had a contract dispute around 2015-17 [0] though it ended up getting dismissed by the USDCNDC, but CATL was always targeting the Power Electronics space like Siemens and Hitachi while BYD cornered the rechargeable battery market by 2010 when Berkshire Hathaway and Samsung took a minority stake in them
I been following the Tesla IR presentations. The slowdown was intentional. The key issues are Tesla doesn't have diversified model lines, price wars and the misstep with 4680 batteries. Currently Tesla Shanghai has more than enough capacity for global Model 3 and Y demand. The rate of growth for these models have also slowed down from 2yrs ago. Hence why Tesla is doing aggressive price cuts, also when your doing aggressive price cuts you don't want to increase production dramatically in order to keep the margins in line. You can also see that since they have done price cuts the margins are down. At the same time in luxury market, both Model S and X sales have fallen dramatically. Which btw is made in US and exported internationally. Going to Europe, from what I understand the battery production productivity isn't anywhere near China and lastly Tesla gets federal govt credit for making batteries in US and then exported to Europe. Last part is 4680 misstep, first of all 4680 isn't anywhere close to what Tesla said at the their battery day. The production is still expensive, hence why they cancelled the sub 39k$ CT. Which btw has been the biggest mistake. Tesla could have easily sold 250k units once fully scaled up, but now they have moved to timelines to maybe in 2026.
If you look at the production targets for F150 lightning, the total sales this year will be higher than CT. If you look at the sales/price bell curve of light trucks (note this is inclusive of SUVs, but Trucks make up at least half the dataset), you see a massive amount of area in the $40 -50K range, the over $70K range makes up less than 5%.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_artic...
In other words, Cybertruck sales numbers are going to hurt until the price is closer to announcement - A $39K Cyber Truck could (theoretically) sell millions based on category alone. a $100K truck could sell tens of thousands.
Its kind of funny how people digging Tesla grave when BYD rise is a way bigger problem for all other car companies. Tesla is still producing a huge amount of EV compared to everybody.
Tesla strategy is to have huge factories, not many factories. They are not only building Giga Mexica. There is currently expansion of Berlin and Texas.
In addition to that they have many other things and locations. Such as their own lithium refinement. Battery materials factory in Austin and stuff like that.
> All that while Tesla seems to have lots cash at hand, so why don't they expand more aggressively?
As Musk has pointed out, the real limit isn't money but the ability to hire experts and to manage all these complex projects.
The problem is that, in Germany and the US, Tesla costs are going through the roof. They can expand in China, but probably don't want it. They can also do it in Mexico, but won't be fast either.
The truth is that China has, through government decision, created a full supply chain for EV production, mirroring their success in other areas. The US is several years behind them. Tesla can invest the money in the US to catch up, but it will be very costly, so probably they won't be able to do what you wish.
China had cleaner way to allow corporate barnstorming as well, due to it's general state/status.
Vehicles in china there don't have to be nearly as safe (for better or worse) and range anxiety is less of an issue for many of the residents, thus the tiny Electric vehicles we see that sometimes can't go over 25-35MPH (I think one or two may have even used lead batteies, practically adult sized power-wheels...)
Additionally, BYD had the advantage of being in the LiFePO and mass manufacturing game very early. I remember seeing their booth at the Detroit Auto Show back in... 2008-2010ish? and they had a couple of vehicles out for display. However it became seemed clear they were more interested in showing off battery tech to others and the vehicles in a way felt presented like 'Reference Boards'.
Bottom line is that private companies can’t compete with governments. China heavily subsidizes its industries, far more than the US or Germany, and makes it easy for them to operate.
The US also heavily subsidizes its industries. It is just not done in a smart way. US money goes mainly into increasing profits of already rich companies, so they have less incentive to innovate and create new products. China spreads its money across the whole industry, so new companies will benefit and create a complete supply chain.
A lot of Chinese money just goes to zombie SOEs, but are really funding some official’s villa and foreign education for their kid. Chinese money can be just as dumb as American money. There were a ton of scammy EV companies selling basically golf carts when China first started subsidizing EV development and sales. It took around half a decade to get rid of those.
I disagree. The Chinese are just able to leverage a lot of what would have been disposable income for normal working people. In fact, this why their demographic decline is going to be especially painful.
BYD is nominally a private company. What you're really getting at is that governments can subsidize industries to give their domestic companies an unfair advantage, and China does that aggressively.
Other countries could do the same thing or punish China for it via tariffs etc., but doing nothing seems like a bad idea.
We've had subsidies for EVs in the US for over a decade now. US governments have bailed out automakers in the past. Every election year, politicians parade over car making states with promises to win votes.
US government has done as much as it can to protect ICE cars, ICE workers, ICE unions, oil companies (US is #1 oil producing country).
I think what you're trying to say is that Chin has done a better job subsidizing its EV industry than the US has and China has more incentives to move towards an EV future.
> We've had subsidies for EVs in the US for over a decade now.
For EVs generally regardless of where the carmaker is headquartered.
> US governments have bailed out automakers in the past.
And were justly criticized for it even domestically.
> US government has done as much as it can to protect ICE cars, ICE workers, ICE unions, oil companies (US is #1 oil producing country).
Whataboutism. Two wrongs don't make a right.
> I think what you're trying to say is that Chin has done a better job subsidizing its EV industry than the US has and China has more incentives to move towards an EV future.
EV incentives work similar to what the US has. You buy an EV and you get a tax credit, regardless of whether it's from GM or Hyundai. Cheating is when the subsidies are only available to domestic companies.
Very simplistic view. US has also given billions in subsidies to US ev makers and protectionism. One reason Tesla is so big on US is China is not allowed to enter.
It does not sound as ominous if you also include the next line he said.
"We kind of dug our own grave with the Cybertruck. It is going to require immense work to reach volume production and be cash flow positive at a price that people can afford. It will take a year to 18 months before it is a significant cash flow contributor."
They should have just put everything on Tesla model 2. In Belgium everyone is excited for a 5000 EUR tax cut for EV vehicles below 40000 EUR. Lots of people interested in buying Model 3 and Model Y now. But 35000 EUR is still too much for the general public. If they could’ve released a model 2 for 25000-30000 EUR instead of the Cybertruck, it would have dominated the EV market.
It’s very much possible to buy a BYD in Norway, yet they don’t sell well. I don’t know why BYD doesn’t try harder. Maybe too small market to bother investing a lot, so they rather import a few cars at too high prices to check the Norway box.
Norway is (I believe?) the flagship country for Tesla, so it may be more difficult to pierce.
I remember EV's penetration is super high there.
Very cool link to see the imports!
I was questioning availability of the cars, because I think this is the key issue for BYD.
I wouldn't want to buy a car where you cannot get support.
In Estonia for example, Tesla's are not very popular for that reason, because for a long time, you couldn't even buy them from the official website (so you had to go through gray imports and drive to Finland for the routine maintenance), it's somewhat better now.
But BYD is simply unreasonably difficult to purchase, and if you do, then just doing a routine maintenance (or if you have an accident) sounds much more difficult than Tesla.
Once they solve that distribution problem (and don't get under political sanctions), I think they can be really great cars.
> Once they solve that distribution problem (and don't get under political sanctions
That's the problem, I believe BYD will be sanctioned to hell in Europe (not to mention USA). They will, however, easily dominate on BRICS and other places outside rich western countries.
When we were looking for our next EV last summer, the BYDs all had some weird design elements that killed the vibe for us one way or another.
We ended up with a Renault Megane e-Tech[1], very pleased with it so far. Our garage was built for 1970s cars and can't fit the new monsters, so choice was limited.
Never grokked real market for it - all the toyota hilux owners? These type of cars are basically not used in Europe, you can sometimes see it on farms but almost never on the roads and general population simply doesn't buy them, they are not the best choice since they drive poorly and have high running costs, and also way too big for our roads and parkings.
Also, legendary hilux has solid reliability in brutal conditions (thats why every isis in desert has them, ideally with some gun or rockets mounted in the back). No way some early 1st generation of much more expensive electric car will match that. You want to have that safety of lugging around additional fuel tank or two in jerrycans and refuel in a minute, instead of doing additional mental gymnastic re chargers.
So a bad civilian car, and farmers are very price sensitive so not a great choice for them (now).
Tesla has a history of making low volume prototypes that they sell to weird early adopters and then making high volume cars. The prototypes validate the designs without as much potential for a crushing warranty bill if a technology bet isn't great.
For instance, tesla went through several varieties of battery chemistry in the early days of the S before landing on the setup they ended up sticking with for the model 100 and later models.
The CT is a similar low volume prototype of the maxwell technology dry cell battery stuff, 48 volt and "drive by wire" architecture that is 100% novel. They're really better off just selling it to a smaller number of people until they get the bugs worked out. The stainless steel stuff is cute but not the hard part of the CT.
I think it was an attenpt at the luxury SUV market. A lot of rich people drive huge SUV's, the cybertruck can kinda be a quirkie suv. The hilux type workhorse trucks will never be replaced by anything electric (atleast on the global scale, america might have a chance with the f150 lightning)
FWIW, Tesla's market cap is almost 10x BYD's. So the market does not necessarily agree with this assessment. One reason is that Tesla competes exceptionally well in the international luxury car market. BYD pushes a lot of metal at low margins.
Not always - volume is often better than margin if you are in a competitive market and have enough access to capital (other things being equal).
Particularly if you are taking market share from your (higher margin) competitor. If you can sell two cars at half the margin, that can be better than one car at double the margin if your competitor got the other sale, assuming your strategy is to take the market (i.e. wipe out your competitor).
High margins tend to be hard to defend in the long run (without building a moat).
Perhaps they know something we don’t. The news outlets won’t shut up about EV demand “slipping”. That could be because they don’t like Musk, but it could also be real. In a post-truth society there’s no way to know.
Or maybe they are just fucking up since their CEO is occupied with other things. Or they face an uphill battle against an opponent that is essentially state-backed. Or it's just very hard to scale up a car manufacturer, even if you want to very hard.
History shows that no company ever was as superior to its competition as it may seem at their height. Shit's hard yo.
Tesla is the only US EV manufacturer able to meaningfully compete at all. It absolutely dominates its market segment. If that’s “fucking up”, I don’t know what to tell you. Are you sure you’re being rational about this?
You can always read financial reports like 10-Ks and see what the company says and what their number say. Numbers like that don't really lie.
The media has never been a "source of truth" at the best they act as watchdogs, at the worst they are propaganda. You can still find answers for yourself but good information has a time cost.
Demand is a lagging indicator, and worse, they have to plan well ahead for how it changes. Building multiple billion dollars worth of production capacity ahead of a severe recession would be a potentially fatal decision.
You can always use leading indicators (unemployment, inflation) to estimate future car sales, then extrapolate the EV market share based on current growth numbers. It's not perfect but it's not like large institutions somehow have a crystal ball. They are likely doing the same, just with better models.
Both unemployment and inflation numbers are known to be fake though. They’re specifically designed to make the government look good. One would be a fool to rely on them exclusively.
If unemployment and inflation rates are politically gamed nothing is truly measurement?
Many things can be measured. And unemployment is measuring something but not what it's titled suggests. It's measuring some group of people who qualify as looking for work within a specific timeframe. Someone looking for work for a few years is deemed to employed by this calculation some might question it.
Changing the definition of a recession is political.
That doesn't mean measurements are incorrect and prediction is impossible.
My comment was sarcasm. OP is being a defeatist to anyone trying to explain that, yes, actually, you can measure these things. You don't need the media to spoonfeed you fake information.
By the time a number is getting printed in the newspaper, Goodhart's Law has already taken effect. Anyone who has a good metric is keeping it quiet, the only way to know anything is to get deeper into the details than the average voter.
They are not totally fake, but engineered to show only the good parts. Like when fuel prices drop, and this appears in the data as huge inflation reduction, when in fact food and shelter prices are growing faster than anyone wants to admit.
The only leading indicators you need in the car market are days of inventory and recent price actions.
Tesla's have deep discounts, suggesting a decline in demand. The end. Inventory is harder because they lack dealerships, but it doesn't seem difficult to find a Model3/ModelY right now at all.
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For other EVs like Ford Mustang MachE, days of inventory are rising and prices are declining as well as incentives.
It's not just Tesla, it's a wide group of EVs that were overproduced.
You’re considering those metrics as though they’re independent from APR on loans, which could easily double from where they are now in case we enter a recession and rate hikes prove ineffective. Try to sell an expensive car on a loan with an eye watering APR of, say 10-12%. This did actually happen in the past, and could very well happen again.
You've got it backwards. Recessions cause rate-drops.
> Try to sell an expensive car on a loan with eye watering APR of, say 10-12%. This did actually happen in the past, and could very well happen again.
Rate-hikes cause us to lose demand. Yes. But we can see that Toyota demand remains strong with less than 30-days-of-inventory on the average.
So the rate-hikes from the current Fed plan are causing expensive cars (like EVs) to lose demand, while cheaper, more-reliable ICE / Hybrid cars from Toyota are selling like hotcakes.
Yes, I'm watching interest rates and am trying to understand how our economy shifts because of them. But at this base level, EVs are doing worse (and the stats prove it), while cheaper cars (namely ICE/Hybrids) are doing far better right now than anyone expected.
Don’t look at recent recessions which happened under almost zero rate regime. Look at the Carter era recession. Consider as well the cost of “printing money” if the rate reaches double digits, and the cost of refinancing the existing debt load.
I said: recessions cause rate-drops. Which has always been true. Rate-drops don't always cure recessions, but its one of the first moves a central bank will make to try to fix a recession.
That's 2020, 2007, 2000, 1990, 1981, 1979 where a recession immediately caused a rate-drop.
We have to go all the way back to 1974 before we had inflation so high that the central bank kept rates high even during a recession. (Dropping rates causes inflation, so its a balancing act). Even then, interest rates dropped to bring us out of the recession of 1974.
After that, we have 1969, 1959, and 1957 recessions, all three of which caused interest rates to drop.
So 9/10 times, a recession caused an immediate drop in interest rates. And the last 1 time (1974), the recession _eventually_ caused the bankers to drop rates.
> Consider as well the cost of “printing money” if the rate reaches double digits, and the cost of refinancing the existing debt load.
That's why the central bank lowers rates during recessions, its an indirect way to print money (or perhaps more accurately, expand M2).
Raising rates, like what we're doing today, destroys money (or more accurately, contracts M2). We're destroying money today with 5%+ interest rates because we've seemingly made too much in the 2020 recession / COVID19.
> Price: The 2022 Tesla Model Y starts at $64,990. A Model Y Performance model starts at $67,990. Fully loaded, a Performance model can exceed $80,000.
Is there any other car, EV or otherwise, that is seeing a 33%+ decline in price over the last two years?
Other EVs are seeing deep shadow-discounts. I'm seeing 0% or 1.9% APY financing, which comes out to a few $x,000 savings over the term of the loans. Its an interesting trick to reduce prices without changing the MSRP, but I'm perfectly aware of these games.
Still, no one is doing the depth of discounts like Tesla is doing right now. Granted, all EV makers (Ford F150 Lightning, Subaru Solterra, etc. etc.) have discounts of some kind, or at least financing-1.9% or other "shadow discounts". But nothing on the level of wtf 30%+ declines like Tesla.
And the "target price" for this thing was supposed to be $30,000.
It's hard to do the same comparison for the Model Y because it was originally released in the middle of the COVID supply chain problems, but notice that the year you're using was the high water mark. The Model Y Performance was $69,190 in 2022 but $61,190 in 2021:
There is also an explanation for why Tesla's pricing is like this: They don't use dealerships. For most carmakers, if they temporarily can't supply enough cars, they don't change the MSRP but the dealers mark them up. Since Tesla doesn't have dealers, to change the price they change the MSRP.
Tesla sell more EVs in USA than everyone else combined, partially because they can cut prices. Is any other company even making a profit selling EVs in USA?
I don't like the "post truth" trends in politics either, but I don't think there was ever a time when treating "news outlets" as "truth" was actually a good strategy. They've always had biases, blind spots, and agendas - just like they do now.
There are almost daily reports of demand falling despite sales still going up (just not as fast). The general public are being conditioned by these articles to believe sales are going down. Obviously someone benefits from this narrative as it’s being pushed pretty hard.
I recently bought an EV and it's obvious that they still have some significant downsides: expensive up front and poor public charging situation, mostly.
The ID4 we got is very comfortable to drive around in, but doing a road trip in Winter feels out of the question. Not that it'd be completely impossible, mind, but I'm pretty confident it'd be a pain in the ass. We'd need to stop more frequently than in our CRV, for a longer period of time each time, and the whole situation with electric car chargers are that sometimes they're broken or working worse than expected, or they're all taken (and it takes way long for a spot to be freed up than at a gas station), or there's problems with the software running the charger, etc.
It'd also be nice if it charged faster and had more range too; it's not terrible on those metrics, but I wouldn't say it's great. Certainly not comparable at all to gas cars.
Should have bought a Tesla - they had the foresight to actually build their supercharger network which makes longer trips feasible, if not necessarily as convenient. But I go on long roadtrips (by which I mean longer than 200-250 miles) maybe once a year, if that. What you’ve described is not an issue to the vast majority of Tesla owners.
My wife really disliked the Model Y we took for a test drive, especially the road visualization that you can't turn off for some reason. Can't fully blame her, the thing looked unstable/distracting, and making it impossible to turn off is a bizarre UX decision.
But yes, I'm aware that Tesla has the charger situation handled much better.
Does anyone know what that visualisation is about? It doesn’t bother me, but it also doesn’t help me or give me any useful information.
If it showed me the road behind me, for example, that would be super useful for lane changing. But it doesn’t.
I have never once been able to work out what it does, and would love to see the map take up the whole screen, or maybe a list of route instructions could go there.
I also noticed that the “full self driving preview” option seems to have disappeared (it never worked anyway, guessing it’s because we drive on the left)
My assumption was that it was to help build confidence in their self-driving by always showing you what it sees no matter if it is control or not. It does have some effect in that you start to get a feeling of what situations the car has a good idea about the surroundings and when it struggles.
There is probably a "it looks cool" factor that doesn't hurt.
As far as UX options. Providing customization is old-school thinking these days :/
In my car it doesn't even look particularly cool. The visualisation from FSD that I've seen people post on the internet does look nice, but that's not what I see - I get a very low detail representation of the lines on the road, and occasionally the vehicles ahead of me. I think that's what it used to look like before FSD, but it seems like the FSD preview hasn't arrived in Australia yet.
Dark mode was on. She hated that more than light mode actually, said it looked like a horror thing (she's not wrong).
It might sound minor, but that visualization is on the part of the screen close to the steering wheel 100% of the time you're driving. If it's distracting to you, it'll be distracting any time you're driving, and you can't turn it off.
It's like a running shoe that comes with a pebble permanently stuck inside.
Agree. I did an 6-hour/500km drive last week in my model 3, we had to charge once. Found a supercharger in the car park of the local golf course.
The anxious feeling about “will the charger work/will there be a space” is real, but the more EVs are out there, the less this is going to be a problem.
My petrol car could have done the trip without refuelling, but it would also have cost, literally, 5x the cost of charging in fuel.
Road trips in the winter suck in a Tesla, despite the Supercharger network. Batteries perform worse, you have to charge frequently, and you have to drive slower than during normal weather. That pretty much writes off the entire Midwest where people travel a lot during the holidays. My FIL used to live one state away, roughly a 4.5 hour drive in an ICE. The same drive in a Model 3 would require 3 stops, and then we'd arrive at his house with less than 20% charge. And since he doesn't have a charger, we'd be stuck using 110v, which would add basically nothing. So the return trip would require a long long stop just to get on the Interstate.
1) Tesla needs to open up superchargers to other cars. They're doing this at scale now, but generally only the less popular ones, or if they're required to do so by government grants. So many key sites are still off limits to others.
2) In the US only, other car manufacturers need to adopt Tesla's NACS charging standard, so they can physically connect to superchargers. (In the rest of world, everybody including Tesla is already standardized on CCS2.)
Tesla built the US superchargers first, so they used a proprietary plug that only just got standardized as NACS / SAE J3400, whereas non-Tesla US EVs were selling with standard CCS (or J1772) ports.
Different from the EU Superchargers, which I believe do offer standard CCS?
But it would be nice to be able to road trip more easily, and 100% this is an important factor in a lot of people's decisions, even if road tripping is something they do only infrequently.
The median American lives within 18 miles of their mom and 80% within "a couple hours."[0] 55% are within an hour's drive of their extended family.[1] The majority of Americans do not drive long distances for holidays. It's common, but like, most people aren't doing it, which is congruent with GP's statement that "most people don't roadtrip."
So a couple of hours. Say 140 miles. In winter, that's about your max range in a Model 3/Y. So you arrive with so little juice, and at a house that has no charger. So you have to charge forever on 110v. Then limp your car to a Supercharger and wait forever to get to 80%. Then make a stop halfway home to charge again.
this is the type of thing i would say before i actually got an EV.
now that i have an EV and no place at home to charge it (like tens of millions of other Americans) and have to use public infrastructure...
its crap. its just utter crap. yes 90% of trips are not road trips but people do not want to buy a car that can do 90% of what they want any more than they would buy shoes or clothes that only work 90 percent of the time. (and imagine if you could only buy one pair of shoes or one shirt).
Yeah, I agree that buying an EV without charging at home doesn't make much sense. And if you do need to drive many hours, even occasionally, that would be a great reason not to get an EV. To be clear: I don't own an EV, nor am I planning to buy an EV next time I need a car.
Midwest especially; growing up a one day drive across the entire width of Illinois and Indiana to see relatives was a common occurrence for the holidays and our summer family trip.
The truth is that EVs work very well in China and parts of Europe because they have good public transportation, so the EV is used only for minor or infrequent trips. For anything longer they will use trains. In the US the situation is different, you need to use cars for major trips, which is not the best option if you have an EV.
Planes are much popular and this data seems to include commuters so the proportion of people travelling medium to long distances by train is much lower (and most medium/intercity travel is obviously usually done by car and not trains..)
Amongst other significant issues (e.g. cross border travel) high-speed trains tend to be quite expensive, so unless you're travelling alone a car is usually cheaper.
This is what I still can't comprehend about Amtrak. I priced out a bus trip to a few states away and it was <$40. Amtrak cost more than a plane ticket. Is it astonishingly overpriced because nobody uses it and then nobody uses it because it's astonishingly overpriced?
Train systems require heavy government investment until they can (maybe) produce any profit. But the same is true for other transportation systems: the auto industry is also heavily subsidized at all levels in the US, you just don't hear the numbers.
Amtrak is heavily subsidized: the federal government pays for its capital expenses (tracks, tunnels, etc); Amtrak is expected to cover its operating expenses (employees, etc). Very common arrangement all over the world.
you can fly several states over for $40? damn, if i were to fly from, say melbourne to sydney, capital cities of neighboring states, it'd be at minimum $150 AUD (~$100 USD) round trip. interstate travel is way more accessible there huh?
Note that most airports that Ryanair flies to are in the middle of nowhere, so nobody I'm aware of uses them for business travel (except maybe in Ireland). Also Ryanair is famous for all sorts of add-on costs, i.e. they will weigh your carry-on, 30s too late at checkin, pay with credit card ... all cost significant extra.
I think that's only the case for a few major, western European cities.
Ryanair fly to the primary airport in eastern and southern Europe. I'll take a direct Copenhagen to Sofia flight rather than enjoy changing with Lufthansa.
fascinating! i would assume then that has an impact on the culture in europe as to how far is considered a "long" drive then, it never occurred to me that it could be that flights are so cheap, i always assumed the main reason for the difference in attitude was just because the countries were so much smaller and therefore local cultural differences became apparent much sooner!
I think you misread him. He was said that the bus (ground transport) was $40, and that the train (Amtrak) was more than a plane. He didn't say how much the plane cost. Your $100 USD for a short flight is probably the low end of a reasonable estimate here in the US too.
It's not really that different though. Google is showing me a round trip flight between New York and Miami for $55. Amtrak wants more than four times that, and it's 27 hours each way instead of 3.
I feel like the premise of a train is that it costs less than a plane and uses less fuel per passenger, so it should be slower but have the countervailing advantage of being less expensive. That is not what I'm observing.
If I had to gander a guess, most of people who were going to buy an EV have already bought one, and a certain percentage of the market will always be impenetrable so long as charging a car battery is more inconvenient than filling up a gas tank.
Far from the truth. I have been building PEVs since I was in my teens (ebikes, scooters, a boat). When it came to buy a new car for the first time in my life in 2020, there were no EV options that would do what I needed (large cargo capacity, 6+ seats, not extremely expensive, decent range for road trips).
Sorry, I'm not spending 100k on a vehicle.
So I ended up getting a Palisade for around 32k, and my wife and I share that, at least until until better (and cheaper) EV options appear.
Luckily I can use my ebike for most of my around town travel, and that is way less of a carbon footprint than adding an extra vehicle to the roads.
It's more likely EV sales are driven by cost. They have always been more expensive than ICE cars, so they only eaten into the luxury market up until now so the rises you see are increasingly bigger bites out of the luxury market. But the primary cost is batteries, and a blip during COVID aside the cost of batteries has dropped every year. EV are approaching the cost of ICE cars now, if you include a bit of hand waving about maintenance costs.
Once they cross cost threshold and drop below the cost of ICE cars, that quadratic curve will go exponential for a while. Chargers will spring up like weeds, because you can make money out of them and they cost far, far less to build and run than a gas station.
I keep hearing this argument but as someone who has been shopping for a EV for months now I don't see it. EV proponents need to understand one important thing: People like their gas cars because they are actually pretty good these days. The EV needs to overcome that.
The car I am benchmarking against is the Mazda CX-5. The natural equivalent is the Model Y.
The CX-5 is a fully mature platform and is an excellent example of a solid ICE vehicle.
Mazda CX-5 Cost: $29,300 (possible out the door price ~35K)
Model Y cost: Demo vehicle out the door price is ~41K
My upper bound price is 35K and im seriously exploring used given Mazdas reliability so I can save myself ~10K for a recent model year.
I cant do the same on the Model Y because of Tesla's poor quality reputation. Either I am stuck taking a massive risk on a used Model Y or I am priced out of the market. Repair costs on the Model Y are insane.
This is not including the fact that the Insurance cost on a Model Y is almost double that of a CX-5 for me. (970$/yr vs 1700$/year)
Now I have also considered other EVs but none provide an equivalent to what the CX-5 offers.
Theres the used Mach-E market but I have concerns about reliability and given the whole issue with the contactors and how Ford handled it, I don't think this car will last long term. OK, lets ignore that issue, you still get a bad looking car that gives poor value for the price you have to pay (I can only buy used and it is still on the upper bound of what my budget is)
There is the Chevy Bolt EUV. Good insurance, easily within my price range but I am giving up everything else. Terrible charging speeds (made worse because I dont have supercharger access), not really a crossover, terrible looks, not as comfortable as CX-5.
This is just my anecdote but there has got to be many others who have made the same conclusion as me about EVs. You have to compromise in at least one of the following areas with every EV: Price, looks, comfort, value
To me, there is just a class of people who are simply out of touch with reality.
While I could afford the monthly payment on a $41k car, I would never do that when I would be starting my comparison with a $16k Nissan Versa.
Then on top of that, there are many who would be starting with a Nissan Versa because they simply can't afford an EV even if they wanted to.
EV discussion always ends up being what the best espresso maker is when a huge % of the population is just going to buy the cheapest coffee maker they can because they are too broke to buy much else.
This exactly! A large part of the market is actually shopping below the price of a new car because thats all they can do. Its getting worse since those buyers are being priced out more and more everyday. We have reached peak auto in America as well.
The last car I owned (Mazda3) lasted me 10 years and cost me 6k (I bought it at 60K miles)
The CX-5 is what I consider a stretch purchase. I can easily afford it but after working 15 years I feel like I wanted to get something I consider upscale.
Really wish more EVs were in this price range but if you include the nonsense that Tesla does with repair costs, the fact that even in 2024 it is still up in the air whether or not they can consistently build a reliable car, and all the other OEMs just messing around with bad designs, the state of EVs is pretty poor. :/
Like I mentioned in my previous post: This isn't a situation where ICE cars are so horridly bad that most people's day to day lives are made worse. You could maybe say that for some EVs though. People are quite happy with their ICE cars, and EV makers need to not only overcome all the issues that they have, they also need to overcome this friction to switching.
Good for you. The number of complaints I see on the Teslamotors subreddit, TMC forums, youtube, and Truedelta make me unlikely to take you at your word. With something so important and expensive on the line why would I make the decision based on your anecdote?
why would you your decision on anecodoes of disgruntled users instead though? people who aren't having problems aren't going to storm over to TMC forums and yell THINGS ARE FINE! how many model Y's have been sold, and how many people are posting? my thoughts here aren't about Tesla, but about the broader online complaints system. people who aren't even thinking about it (food from a restaurant, service from a auto shop, whatever) just aren't motivated to go online and say things are fine because they're busy having lives outside of yelling how fine their experience is, so we get this distorted view of the situation because of that.
Well I find consumer reports was spot on with my last car in terms of what failed. Since the Model Y is only in my budget used, and they rank model years 20,22,23 as 2/5 in reliability with 21 getting a surprising 3/5 I am inclined to think all those numerous people complaining about quality issues isn't just selection bias.....plus there is the fact that the car insurance is almost double that of the Mazda...im sure part of that is repair costs.
When you are risking so much money on the line, it becomes difficult to ignore all these signals.
Drive an EV. You’ll understand why people buy them. Then also consider that you’ll almost always charge it at home, and the price of a “full tank” is $8 where I live. Not a typo. And you don’t have to go to a gas station, and potentially stand in line there. All of this saves time and money, and you get a much better driving car which requires zero maintenance other that changing tires every 40k miles or so.
I have driven an EV. Despite the smooth riding nature of them, I'm looking for a car that will last me 10+ years. My last car(Mazda 3) was perfection in my eyes. I really would like an EV. I don't have time or money for a headache. I am also planning on moving with my car a couple times in the next few years to different cities so there is that problem with charging infrastructure. I was just looking at the situation in LA (Silver Lake area) and for non tesla chargers it is surprisingly worse than I thought given that this is California.
Well, not everywhere in the world is electricity cheap. In Germany (Munich) I pay around 70 cents for kWh. That's close to what a full tank of gas would cost.
The market is only impenetrable because of the price.
If we had used subsidies to undercut gas powered cars we would be much further along than subsidizing expensive status symbols for people who have to always have the latest iphone.
Of course, demand was going to slow from that market from saturation.
The same reason I use an android and so do a 130 million other Americans. I am cost conscious and I will never pay more for an EV if I can pay less for a gas powered car.
The main problem IMO is the groups making these decisions all have the latest iphone at the margin. "No one wants an android" besides for nearly half the population that shop based on price.
At least in the US, Auto demand has slipped a little bit with the changes to financing, some manufacturers are still being hesitant to offer incentives, and some dealers seem insistent on acting like we are still in full-on covid whiplash shortage mode with slimy upcharges.
Sprinkle in the various reliability issues that have come up recently (regardless of whether they are better or worse than what happens to ICE vehicles)...
Oh, Also, Kinda wondering what's happened to Kia/Hyundai's EV sales due to public perception, I still see probably as many of their EV's as I do GM[0]
[0] It's around this order, not counting plug-in hybrids and M-Plates[1]: Tesla, Ford, Hyundai/GM, Rivian, Polestar, BMW/VW
[1] M-Plate is a "Manufacturer's" License plate. Not all states have them, but mine does and due to where I run into a lot of them. Since they range between prototypes and 'company car' they don't count in the ranking.
I mean is it just like, interest rates?
Even if they have cash on hand, I'm assuming any big moves they would make are still really capital intensive because it's the auto industry.
By stuff Tesla and Musk have said, they are expecting slowing sales growth, but part of that is also because they said they are developing a new car. But other comments have just been standard demand and competition.
So is it just they don't think it's a good idea to keep expanding at past pace into uncertainty while hurdle rates got much higher?
Individual model sales don't make much sense as a metric when makers are diversifying. The model Y has 1.2M sales for a total of 1.8M Tesla cars in 2023, where Toyota alone is at 11.2M.
As they should have been in both cases. For most uses EV is superior, and this is the only way for Chinese manufacturers to meaningfully tackle the broader markets worldwide. You can’t compete with ICEs and hundreds of billions of dollars invested into that manufacturing capacity, supply chains, and know how. But you can entirely sidestep the whole thing. Which is what the Chinese are doing.
The Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling vehicle in 2023. Hard to imagine you looked seriously and were unable to find that out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_Y
He may have been confused because it’s a dumb statistic.
In good faith he probably assumed that the above post implied that Tesla was in some way leading other manufacturers, rather than Tesla having the single best selling model while massively underperforming in sales compared to other manufacturers that have had the bright idea of offering many different models of car.
"most popular car in the world" not most popular last year; specificty matters if you want to make big claims. The title goes to the Corolla with over 50 million sold. And apparently 1.6mil 2023 according to finalized numbers.
Anyway, Tesla's numbers do not separate Model 3/Y, and they ballpaked $1.2
For individual models I've seen Model Y as #1. But seems like growth has stopped, so paralyzed is still appropriate, and they only have 2 models that sell significant numbers
Pickup trucks aren't cars in the same way that tomatoes aren't vegetables. If you say "I bought a car" and then show someone your brand-new Ford F-150, nobody's going to think anything of it. Pickup trucks are cars, and watching Tesla fans try to spin this fact is really pathetic.
I don't know how widely held that viewpoint is. words mean things and cars aren't trucks, and someone's option on Tesla has nothing to do with that. If you call a truck a car, there are people that will look at you funny.
But why expand if no one buys their cars? There are so many more players selling EVs now both from China and Europe. It's harder to sell when you have competition.
I'm not sure about this specific case, but the general case is usually that China is using some technique that is illegal in the US. Or sometimes energy policy is the problem.
You mention Giga Berlin for example. Germany is suffering from the EU energy crisis (which really has been an ongoing thing since around 2008 when the per capita downtrend in energy took hold), so it wouldn't be weird if cars being produced there aren't competitive with Chinese-manufactured goods.
Similarly, US manufacturing doesn't seem to have the same vibrancy as Chinese work and the root causes seem to be environmental and labour law. It is also possible that the US just doesn't have the expertise; as far as I'm aware the US doesn't have an answer to Shenzhen (I'm happy to be told this is just ignorance, the US is a big place, but so far no dice).
